I’ll keep this blog post short, so I can get it up on this, The Healthcare Business Process Management Blog, before Appian World 2015 ends (in about 5 minutes!). Don’t worry; I’ve got four or five more posts planned, all about ideas from Appian World 2015 (and how they can be implemented in healthcare).

First of all, Appian World just keeps getting bigger and bigger. This year there were over 1000 attendees.

I live in DC and have been to every Appian World (six? seven?) — to learn as much as I can about the kind of modern post-industrial BPM Appian represents so well. What I know about social, mobile, analytic, cloud-based BPM has been greatly influenced by my cumulative Appian World experiences.

At this Appian World, every speaker I heard, every slide I saw, every conversation in which I participated, confirmed what I’ve believed for many years. Modern Business Process Management is exactly the medicine healthcare and health IT needs to fix its workflow and process woes.

For example, if healthcare and health IT is to achieve what I sometimes call “workflow interoperability” (also task or pragmatic interoperability), it is going to have to go far beyond mere message exchange. It is going to need a layer of “orchestration”, a sort of “spider in the way” (see next embedded tweet) to knit together the wide variety of old and new data-oriented health IT systems. Watch for that post!

At this year’s Appian World, I saw whole bunch of things click into place, modern BPM’s relevance to every industry, and, very specifically, to the healthcare industry.

I judge every conference by how much it makes me want to write and tweet about it.

So, over the next few weeks, look for blog posts about…

standing up high-volume healthcare claims processing,

low-code approaches to empathic app workflow,

learning from other industries’ use of BPM,

importance of BPM to wearables and Internet Of Things,

using BPM to achieve enterprise data integration and interoperability,

and more!

By the way, below is one of my favorite slides from the entire conference. It shows the relationship between the emotional journey of customers and the back end business processes that BPM automates so well. It’s even a medical example (emergency medical bracelets for the home). I won’t say much more now, here, in this post intended to tickle your curiosity. Except this: I love the idea of empathic processes and workflow. I think it will be essential for improving patient experience and engagement. So be sure to watch for that specific future post on this blog.

The following isn’t a slide; it’s a paraphrased quote, from the VP of IS Strategy from Medicaid managed care leader, AmeriHealth Caritas. But it’s just about the pithiest summary of what modern Business Process Management platforms can do for healthcare.

Bookmark this blog post, as I’ll add link to my follow-on blog posts. Or…. One really, really good way to know when each of these posts have just been published, is to follow me on Twitter at @wareFLO!

Ebola & EHR Workflow Engines, Editors & Visibility

Robot-In-My-Pocket

Charles Webster, MD, MSIE, MSIS

Bio: HIMSS14, HIMSS15, and HIMSS16 Social Media Ambassador! If you've got a healthcare workflow story, I want to tell it, blog it, tweet it, interview you, etc.
Chuck Webster, MD, MSIE, MSIS has degrees in Accountancy, Industrial Engineering, Intelligent Systems, and Medicine (from the University of Chicago). He's the ex-CMIO for a three-time HIMSS Davies Award-winning pediatric EHR. Dr. Webster currently services as CMIMO (Chief Medical Informatics Marketing Officer) for workflow technology in healthcare. Chuck also created Mr. RIMP (@MrRIMP) (Robot-In-My-Pocket) a Bluetooth-controlled wearable robot for pediatricians and child life specialists to entertain children. Dr. Webster designed the first undergraduate program in medical informatics, was a software architect in a hospital MIS department, and is a judge for the annual Workflow Management Coalition Awards for Excellence in BPM and Workflow and Awards for Case Management. Chuck is a ceaseless evangelist for process-aware technologies in healthcare, including workflow management systems, Business Process Management, and dynamic and adaptive case management. Dr. Webster tweets from @wareFLO, @HealthITdog, and @MrRIMP (though there is some debate about the last two). He maintains almost a half-a-million words and graphics on numerous websites, including EHR Workflow Management Systems (http://chuckwebster.com), Healthcare Business Process Management (http://HCBPM.com) and the People and Organizations improving Healthcare with Health Information Technology (http://EHRworkflow.com). Please join with Chuck to spread the message: Viva la workflow!